This invention relates to a method for splicing conveyor belting and to the belt construction resulting from such a splice. The present invention can be viewed as an improvement on the splicing arrangement described in Elliott U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,566, issued Dec. 21, 1965, assigned to the Assignee of the present invention, and incorporated herein by reference.
Conveyor belting is customarily spliced at the site where it is to be used, whether a new installation or a repair situation. Because of this, it is highly desirable that a suitable splice can be made without the necessity of special equipment. Nonetheless, the splice should be strong, of substantially uniform thickness with the remainder of the belt, and free from substantial surface irregularities. A common splice has been simply to butt-join the aligned plies of adjacent belt ends using an adhesive of some type, the series of such butt joints often being longitudinally offset one from another. This arrangement, while simple, produced a very weak splice.
The above-mentioned U.S. Pat. No. 3,224,566 teaches a splice which is strong and does not impair belt uniformity, but it requires the manufacture, and stocking, of a reinforcing insert piece that bridges the interruptions in the strength-producing plies of the belting. Accordingly, a principle object of the present invention is to provide a splicing arrangement which results in a desirable splice in terms of the criteria discussed above, but which avoids the logistics problems of obtaining, stocking, and distributing the inserts.